Food thoughts, recipes and billowing smoke from a home cook's kitchen in London

Tag Archives: side dish

This Citrus and Broccoli Couscous was a lovely side dish I served with the recently posted Cod with Garlic Butter and Gremolata – you can see the recipe here. Because I liked this dish in its own right, it gets its own post although if you want to see a picture you need to go to the cod recipe post! It’s really simple to make (in fact couscous is the best carb option for the lazy in my opinion. Pour boiling water on it, leave it, and voila!) This just requires a minor bit of squeezing and chopping and the results are great. This particular recipe went really well with the fish, and it’s tasty enough in its own right to happily pep up a very plain fish fillet. In my humble opinion, of course!

KB rating 7.5/10 PR rating 7.5/10

Citrus and Broccoli Couscous(serves 6)

Ingredients:

200g couscous

3 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil

185ml boiling water

Juice of 1 lemon

Finely grated zest and juice of 1 orange

2 tbsp chopped thyme leaves

3 tbsp chopped flatleaf parsley

1 tbsp balsamic vinegar

250g broccoli, cut into small florets – blanched for 2 mins and refreshed

Method:

In a medium bowl, combine the couscous with 1 tbsp of the oil and the boiling water. Cover with cling film and set aside for 5 minutes or until the water has been absorbed (as I was cooking for 2 I reduced the recipe accordingly – not sure if that’s the reason that I needed more water than stated and it took a lot longer than 5 mins to absorb). So basically, use your judgement!

Add the lemon juice, orange zest and juice, chopped herbs, balsamic vinegar and the remaining oil and stir to combine with a fork. Season and stir through the broccoli florets.